The activities of Sardegna Teatro are organising in three areas. „In our main action, we produce performance, we are currently running 20 to 25 productions, new and repertoire. We are focused on international touring, Italian theatre remains connected to the Commedia dell’Arte, it is not stationary with permanent staff, permanent actors.” With its production Macbettu, directed by Alessandro Serra, a transposition of the classical Macbeth into Sardinian language, Sardegna Teatro has won many prices in Italy and abroad, and is just back from a tour in Hong Kong, Macao, and South Korea. “And we also produce a lot of new dramaturgy, as we believe in taking risk and support artists who want to experiment with new artistic languages.”
In the context of what culture can do to foster societal cohesion and to support communities in their transformation, Sardegna Teatro did a project for homeless people, and runs a school for small children, from 0 to 3 and from 3 to 6 years. The bilingual school uses the Reggio Emilia methodology, started by Loris Malaguzzi, and introduces performing arts practices to it. “For us, it is a central question how to involve communities, and what holds communities together. They have become quite liquid, they change, and when performing arts help to create a community, how it then stay alive? This is a reflection we do every day, as we ourselves try every day to be different from what we were yesterday.”
A third line of activities is dedicated to working with spaces - Sardegna Teatro is building a new platform now for reflecting what is public space, and how artists can work in public space. “We push artists to present projects on these questions. My idea is to go out of the theatre, to experiment in public space, to bring what we learned back to the theatre, and to create a permeable theatre space that is no longer an inside demarcated from the outside.” A new architectural tendency called “place-making” moves in the same direction, towards places that are open, but there is still a long way to go ... and meanwhile technology can also help to achieve more transparency.
In the COVID pandemic, some experiments with digital tools brought the actors and their ambiance very close to the view of the public, creating a new kind of intimacy. “Is this theatre, or is it cinema? I don’t know. Maybe it is a new artistic language. In general, technology is changing our perception, our way to see things. With video and mobiles, everything is first level, close to you - the use of our senses is changing, and we are interested to explore this change.” The corresponding research into perception can be done in analogue theatre, but Sardegna Teatro is also supporting artists who work with virtual reality, where the perception of the spectator is changing very clearly. “I think from the world of gaming there is some dramaturgy that we can use here to experiment. I am working towards creating a space in our city where you can have technology tools, engineers that help you use it, and artists who can experiment. This is a research time.”
Together with the Engineering Faculty at University of Cagliari, Sardegna Teatro won a Horizon Europe project, and with the funding, Massimo wants to create a centre where artists are paid to research. “I am quite sure there will be a new artistic language, and we have the responsibility to provide a place where artists can learn what they need - not now, but in two, three, four years. How to do this? We have to be connected. If there is a new tool, lets put it in the hands of the artist and see what is going on.”
Hybrid performances are part of the experimentation, and here Sardegna Teatro will first work with the Digital Stage. On September 27, Massimo and colleagues will contribute an installation to gLOKALE 2024 that will use scenes and surplus material from a just completed film on the kidnapping of Giuseppe Vinci, son of the entrepreneur who created the first discount market. “From the 1950s on, kidnapping wealthy people and redistributing money to many hands was a known narrative in Sardinia, but when Giuseppe Vinci was abducted in 1994 and held for 310 days, people in large-scale protests, led by his wife, demanded an end to the kidnapping story. It was a turning point.” Sardegna Teatro will present a video installation with sensors, noises and holograms, offering different filmic narratives that the audience can choose and follow. The event will be live-streamed on the Digital Stage, so that the local audience on site can be connected to a global audience online. “We picked this date because it is the European Research Night - a night to experiment for us. I think the audience, local and global, will understand that they are part of the process, and we are curious and will learn from mistakes.” And in the end, the shared festival experience is also part of a networking process. “From technology we can learn that in our endeavor to learn from each other, we are just nodes of a network where there is no more center and periphery - we are all islands, and sometimes not so easy to reach.”
